The rent in the cloud closed.  She turned with a great, sighing breath.  “Did you see?” she said.  “The train is safe.”

“Of course.”  And again, having himself taken the bracer, Frederic rose and returned the flask to his pocket.  “So, that was troubling you; thought that train might have been struck.  Guess if an avalanche had come down there, we’d have heard some noise.  It’s safe enough here,” he added.  “Top of this crag was built to shed snow like a church steeple.”

“But why are we waiting?” And glancing around, she exclaimed in dismay:  “The others have gone.  See!  They are almost out of sight.”

She began to walk swiftly to the lower rim of the shoulder, and Frederic followed.  Down the slope his sisters and Banks seemed to be moving through a film.  They mingled with it indistinctly as the figures in faded tapestry.  But Morganstein laid his hand on her arm to detain her.  “What’s your hurry?” he asked thickly.  “All we got to do now is keep their trail.  Tracks are clear as day.”

“We shall delay them; they will wait.”

She tried to pass him, but they had reached the step from the spur, and he swung around to block the narrow way.  “Not yet,” he said.  “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.  First time in months you’ve given me a fair chance to speak to you.  Always headed me off.  I’m tired of being held at arm’s length.  I’ve been patient to the limit.  I’m going to know now, to-day, before we go down from this mountain, how soon you are going to marry me.”

She tried again to pass him but, taking incautious footing, slipped, and his arm saved her.  “I don’t care how soon it is,” he went on, “or where.  Quietly at your apartments, or a big church wedding.  On board the first boat sailing for Yokohama, after those coal cases are settled, suits me.”

She struggled to free herself, then managed to turn and face him, with her palms braced against his breast.  His arm relaxed a little, so that he was able to look down in her lifted face.  What he saw there was not altogether anger, though aversion was in her eyes; not surprise, not wholly derision, though her lips suggested a smile, but an indefinable something that baffled, mastered him.  His arm fell.  “Japan is fine in the spring,” he said.  “And we could take our time, coming back by way of Hawaii to see the big volcano, with another stop-over at Manila.  Get home to begin housekeeping at the villa in midsummer.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed at last, “do you think I am a silly girl to be dazzled and tempted?  Who knows nothing of marriage and the cost?”

“No,” he responded quickly.  “I think you are a mighty clever woman.  But you’ve got to the point where you can’t hedge any more.  Banks has gone back on that option.  If he won’t buy, nobody else will.  And it takes ready money to run a big ranch like that, even after the improvements are in.  You can’t realize on your orchards, even in the Wenatchee country, short of four years.  So you’ll have to marry me; only way out.”